SURVEY: The majority of CoinDesk readers think there's a bubble in cryptocurrencies

The explosive growth of the cryptocurrency market even has readers of blockchain news site CoinDesk thinking there is a bubble in the $US164 billion market.

Since the beginning of the year, the market cap for digital coins has increased $US146 billion, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com, an 811% increase. That growth has been fuelled in part by the appreciation of bitcoin, the original digital currency, and initial coin offerings, the red-hot cryptocurrency-based fundraising method.

A survey conducted by CoinDesk found the majority (58%) of the publication’s readers believe digital assets are in a bubble. That’s striking considering at least 68% of the 1,300 readers surveyed are cryptocurrency investors themselves.

CoinDesk’s readers are certainly not the only folks who think there’s a bubble.

The unbridled march of bitcoin, which is up 381% year-to-date, and initial coin offerings, which this year have raised over $US2.1 billion, have folks across Wall Street sounding the alarm.

Jeffrey Kleintop, the chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab, the $US3.1 trillion money manager, said the bitcoin bubble is unlike anything we have ever seen.

Meanwhile, Schwark Satyavolu, a general partner at Trinity Ventures, a venture capital firm, thinks the market for initial coin offerings could be a bubble akin to the mortgage bubble that ushered in the 2008 financial crisis.

“If investments continue at the current rate, this could become the next mortgage crisis with people — including institutional investors — losing hundreds of millions of dollars when (not if) many of these companies go out of business,” Satyavolu said in a statement emailed to Business Insider.